Updated at 6:17 p.m.

The City of Burlington will conduct an internal audit of its racial equity department after the former director left her new job in Minnesota amid allegations of financial mismanagement.

Tyeastia Green served as Burlington’s first director of racial equity, inclusion and belonging for nearly two years, from April 2020 until March 2022, when she left for a similar position in Minneapolis.

Green’s yearlong tenure there ended earlier this month after city officials questioned her financial management of a new Black History Month event she planned called I Am My Ancestors Wildest Dreams Expo. Days before the event, the city council had to approve a budget increase of $145,000, according to Minneapolis' Star Tribune. The entire event cost some $500,000, though city officials were still calculating the final amount.
Green had initially estimated the February 25 expo could draw some 20,000 people to the city’s convention center. But only 3,700 registered for free tickets ahead of time, and some vendors said only a couple hundred people actually attended.



The City of Minneapolis is now planning a three-stage audit of the event. Green has denied any wrongdoing.

She's since resigned from her post, and she blasted city leadership on her way out, saying it “holds, matures, coddles, perpetuates, and massages a racist anti-black work culture."

In a 14-page memo about the “toxic work environment” she says she experienced, Green also accused Black city leaders, including City Council President Andrea Jenkins and Councilor LaTrisha Vetaw, of “antiblack racism.” In her memo, Green threatened to sue Vetaw, who responded to the allegations in an interview with the Star Tribune.

“I am not anti-Black, but I am anti-incompetent," Jenkins told the newspaper.

In an interview on Thursday, Green told Seven Days that she used her resignation letter to describe how Minneapolis leadership "sabotaged" the expo and then set about smearing her. She also asked for officials to conduct an investigation.

"The racism here is crazy. It's insane," she said. "And nobody could sustain this."

In a statement, the City of Minneapolis said Green's allegations "are under review and professional staff will determine whether further investigation is required."

During her Burlington tenure, Green led a department that grew substantially as the city directed new resources to racial justice initiatives. But her relationship with Mayor Miro Weinberger came under public scrutiny in March 2021 after he decided to remove her from overseeing a major study on policing, implying at the time that she couldn't be neutral on the subject. Weinberger instead put a white department head in charge of the project, though he later reversed course and apologized after community backlash.
In a phone interview with Seven Days on Thursday, she described her relationship with Weinberger as "cordial." But, Green said, they differed on how to address racism. The mayor "wanted to uphold white supremacy culture," she said, "and I did not."

"We had a relationship where we disagreed on what racial justice is," Green said. "His form of racial justice means centering white people. My form of racial justice means centering everybody else."

Green called the idea of an audit "incredibly ridiculous."


While on the job, Green helped plan and put on the city’s first-ever Juneteenth celebration, which was held in 2021. The city spent $100,000 on the event, while private donors pitched in another $149,000. The event was a success, and city officials were pleased with attendance.

But the second Juneteenth event, held last year three months after Green departed, went well over budget, requiring the city council in November to approve a $131,666 budget amendment to cover the shortfall. All told, that event cost about $415,000, some $165,000 more than the first celebration.
In a memo to the council, the city’s economic equity analyst, Phet Keomanyvanh, attributed the high costs to inflation, the unexpected hiring of a “local marketing and event service to get things back on track,” and “a transition in leadership which caused confusion around secured donations which delayed a final budget for Juneteenth until late April.”

“By this time,” Keomanyvanh wrote, “event planning and purchases were already in motion.”

In a statement about Burlington’s planned audit, mayoral spokesperson Samantha Sheehan said “there is currently no indication of serious issues regarding the management and spending” for Juneteenth or in the Office of Racial Equity, Inclusion and Belonging during Green’s tenure. But, Sheehan wrote, “some of the details announced last week by the City of Minneapolis” led Burlington officials to “initiate an internal audit to confirm the absence of any waste or misuse of City resources.”
Specifically, Sheehan said, Burlington noted Minneapolis’ audit of the Green-led Black History Month event; the fact that the event required a budget amendment, just as Burlington’s 2022 Juneteenth celebration did; and that “the primary vendor used for the production of the Minneapolis event was a business owned by a former employee who previously served as the Event Manager in Burlington’s REIB Department.”

The former event manager, Casey Ellerby, owns the Atlanta-based company “Touched Apparel,” which was paid some $242,000 to help put on the Minneapolis expo. Ellerby, who lives in the Atlanta area, started working for Burlington in December 2021 but quit in October 2022 after the city changed its remote work policy and required her to work in person, according to Sheehan.

“A preliminary review of invoices did not uncover any contracts with or payments to” Ellerby’s business, Sheehan said.


According to its website, Touched Apparel was founded in 2013 and appears to have been primarily a clothing company that made T-shirts with the phrase "Too Dope to Bully" before it organized the Minneapolis expo. Ellerby did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In its statement, the City of Minneapolis said its audit will review the city's "procurement processes" and specifically mentions a change in city policy to prioritize using local vendors.

It’s unclear when Burlington's audit will begin, how long it will take or what the full scope will be. The city is beginning the process of finding someone to do the work, according to Sheehan.

Green said she has nothing to hide.